Obituary of Ruth Chaloner Haffenden Stillman Parsons

Ruth Chaloner Haffenden Stillman Parsons was born on March 27, 1913 to George E. Haffenden and Dorothy Chaloner Howell Haffenden. She graduated from Syracuse University in 1935 with a bachelor’s degree. Her brother George E. Haffenden, husband of Shirley Fairbanks Haffenden Howard, died in 1949. She married Donald Edouard Stillman in 1936; they divorced in 1955. She married Robert B. Parsons in 1969; he predeceased her in Syracuse in 2001. She is survived by her son David George Stillman and his wife Jeanne Betsock Stillman of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY; John Edgar Stillman and his partner Robert Rosenbaum, of Princeton, NJ; and Dorothy Lucinda Frid and her husband Ross Stanley Frid, of Cadillac, MI. She is also survived by grandchildren George A. Frid of Cadillac; Melissa A. Frid Poumade and her husband Scott Poumade, of Tustin, MI; J. Alexander Stillman and his wife Valerie S. Stillman, of Philadelphia, PA; Gregory David Stillman and his wife Natasa Koljancic Stillman of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, and Juliana Eva Challinor Stillman, of Seattle, Washington. She is also survived by great-grandchildren Zachary T, Frid and Louis G. Poumade, of Tustin, Michigan. She is also survived by her sister-in-law and good friend Shirley Fairbanks Haffenden Howard, of Syracuse, her nephew George E. Haffenden IV and his wife Emily, of Mayville, NY, and her great nephew George E. Haffenden V and his wife Erin of Buffalo, NY and great niece Emily Beth Southwick and her husband Edward Southwick of Bemis Point, NY, as well as many cousins. Ruth Parsons grew up on her family’s dairy farm in Jamesville, New York. Her mother and father came from large families. She was the first college graduate in her family and was always proud of her education. She had an inquisitive mind and continued her quest for knowledge with her peers at work and through discussions at the “kitchen table” with her children and their friends. She was also an avid football and basketball fan as long as the team playing was Syracuse, or one of the colleges her children attended. As a young woman she played piano at several of her cousins’ weddings and had a lifelong attachment and affection for her many relatives. She lived in Syracuse all her life until she and Robert Parsons moved to Liverpool in 1999. She moved in January 2006 to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, where she resided at Andrus-on-Hudson Senior Residence until her death on January 15, 2008. Ruth Parsons worked for many years as the secretary at Rockefeller United Methodist Memorial Church in Syracuse, a church founded by her family, and for 11 years as a secretary at Carlyle Compressor Corporation, part of Carrier Air Conditioning Corporation in Syracuse. She began traveling at age 70, with her son David and his wife Jeanne, and visited France, Belgium, Tunisia, Switzerland, Pakistan, China, Kenya, Tanzania and England. Highlights of her travels included meeting Vice President George H.W. Bush in Lahore, Pakistan and President Jimmy Carter in Arusha, Tanzania. In England, also with her daughter, she tracked down and met several of her distant Haffenden cousins. She later developed interests in antique silver and collected bells. She was a life member of Rockefeller United Methodist Church and attended the First United Methodist Church in Liverpool while residing at Greenpoint. Recently she attended Grace Episcopal Church in Hastings-on-Hudson. A memorial service will be 2:00pm Monday, June 23, 2008 at Rockefeller United Methodist Church, with interment at Morningside Cemetery at the familiy plot. There will be one calling hour prior to the services. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to her memory to Rockefeller United Methodist Church in Syracuse, New York.